THE SUPERNATURAL HABITS, PAUL & NUALA O'HIGGINS [red novels .txt] 📗

INTRODUCTION

This book is not a formula for discovering your possibilities and maximizing your potential.
It is not about developing your possibilities - it is about developing your impossibilities. It is about living a life that we are totally incapable of living, other than by the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.
The tragedy of the human condition is that we are naturally incapable of living the life we want to live and know we should live. The paradox of the moral life is that, as Paul so well expressed it, “the good I want to do I don’t, and the evil I don’t want to do, I do.” (Romans 7:19) What misery! We are invisibly chained with bonds that hinder us from living the life of love, joy and faith we know we are destined for.
By the gift of the Holy Spirit – Christ Jesus living in us - we can be released from these chains, which are the power of sin. The solution to the law of sin is the law and life of the Spirit. This is God’s great solution to man’s moral problem.
“For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. Wretched man that I am!

Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I of myself with the mind, indeed, serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.” (Romans 7:22 - 8:2)
This life of the Spirit creates the possibility of a whole new set of moral habits for us, which were previously beyond our reach. It is these habits we explore in this book.
That which was once impossible is now possible. That which was once unnatural to us becomes supernaturally natural.
The prophets realized God’s high standard, and man’s failure to live by it. As they wrestled with this problem, God showed them He would solve the problem by making a new covenant with them and by putting His Spirit within them.
“Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which covenant of Mine they broke, although I was a husband to them, says the LORD; But this shall be the covenant that I will cut with the house of Israel: After those days, says the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jeremiah 31:31-33)
Here, God promises to take out the hard heart we possess that makes spiritual living impossible and replace it with a new tender heart. “And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26) God will so transform us that by the Spirit we can be empowered to walk in His ways and live by a new set of standards and habits.
Self-help books are directed to the will of man. The habits in this book are possible only as we are empowered from a dimension greater than willpower - the Holy Spirit.
When we recognize the bankruptcy of the merely natural man we can place our faith in something greater than ourselves - the life of the One who has come to live within us. As we do this we draw from the life of the Spirit.
This life is available to all who by faith reach out beyond themselves to the life of Jesus. As Isaiah 12:3 puts it: “with joy you will draw water from the wells of Salvation (Jesus)” i.e. we will learn to draw spiritual strength from a Source beyond ourselves. And as Jesus Himself says: “I am the Vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
Discipline is required, of course. But it is not the kind of discipline that pushes us to do what we cannot do. It is the discipline of constantly drawing from the Holy Spirit who empowers us to do what was previously impossible to us. It is the discipline of those who know that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11.6)
One of the great lacks of much of contemporary Christianity is that it distorts the work of the New Covenant by pointing to the remission of sin without pointing to the removal from sin’s power. The New Covenant is the remission of sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus and it is also the empowerment to live at a supernatural level of moral and spiritual excellence through the power of the Spirit.
Christian living is held together by two paradoxical sayings:
• “I can do nothing of my own” and
• “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”
Psychology is directed to harnessing the powers of the natural man. Christianity, on the other hand, harnesses the power of supernatural life. This can be discovered and experienced by those who are profoundly aware of the weakness of the natural man and receive the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to empower them for a life of love and joy.
It is here that real Christianity is so superior to humanism. It fulfills the goal of the humanist by drawing not on natural human life but on the life of Another.
The revelation of the prophets and the apostles is that moral life cannot be lived apart from the presence of the Spirit of God within us. Without Him this life is impossible, but with Him it becomes supernaturally natural.
This book is an introduction to the supernatural habits of the Spirit-filled believer.
Though this life is natural it is not automatic, as we must learn to function with our new “wings”, put off the old ways and put on the new ways of the Spirit.
This book is an attempt not to exalt the powers of human goodness but to discover once again the life at the reverse side of human failure.

CHAPTER I
THE HABIT OF THANKSGIVING

The first habit that we will look at is the habit of thanksgiving.
It is the most basic habit of the believer. It is the heart’s response to the reality of God’s love and mercy.
The most supernaturally empowered believers are the greatest rejoicers, praisers and thanksgivers. “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.” (Philippians 4:4) They bring non-stop thanksgiving to God to whom they owe everything and from whom they receive everything. Thanksgiving is the heart’s automatic reaction to the happy reality of the kingdom of God.

Thank Who?
Thanksgiving is not just a positive attitude practiced by optimists – it is an acknowledgment that we are the beneficiaries of somebody else’s goodness and help.
The atheist can be thankful, but he cannot be thankful to God.
Thanksgiving is the attitude of those who recognize that all that we have, and are, are gifts from God and that we owe Him thanks for everything.
Thanksgiving is worship. Through it we acknowledge God and our debt to Him. Through it we develop the relationship of love He destined us for. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God the Lord is one, thou shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength.” (Deut. 6:4)
Thanksgiving is our acknowledgment as created beings that we are indebted to our Creator.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Psalm 111.10) The beginning of all right, wise and effective living is to acknowledge God. He can do perfectly well without us, but we would neither exist nor remain in existence without Him.
“Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (James 1:17)
Because everything I have and am is a gift from God, thanksgiving is the natural response to this reality. Thanksgiving is simply the realistic and humble acknowledgment we give to God for our creation and redemption. Scripture says that God created and “destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” (Ephesians 1:5-6)
We were created to give thanks as surely as birds were made to sing their songs. They sing by compulsion – it’s their nature to sing. We give thanks by choice. Thanking God for His grace is an essential part of our destiny. Since we were created to give thanks, we function at our best and most effectively when we do give thanks. Supernaturally empowered believers learn to live a lifestyle of praise and thanksgiving. By doing this they are simply fulfilling their destiny.

Thanks for What?
As believers we thank God not only for our existence - the gift of life and all that supports life - but above all we thank Him for our redemption. We thank Him for the great salvation that has come to us through the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
“If Christ is not risen from the dead, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.” (1 Corinthians 15:14) If there is no resurrection and redemption then there is no eternal life for us. Life for all of us would end in eternal death and destruction. But because Jesus has died for our sins (and we believe it) we know we have eternal life and will live forever in the Father’s love and blessing here on earth and throughout all ages!
God has reconciled us to Himself, given us all things, and continues to supply our every need. Thankfulness to God is the basis of real faith and increase.
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